Settled
by carino2
Summary: Mello takes Matt not out of love, but because he sometimes needs the reassurance of another body beside his. A Mello/Matt fic in two parts.


Settled, a Matt/Mello fic by Carino2

**  
****Disclaimer: **Disclaimed**  
****Warnings: ** Angst. Swears. Run-on sentences galore.**  
****Summary: **Mello takes Matt not out of love, but because he sometimes needs the reassurance of another body beside his.  
**Comments: **I don't think there's any blatant contradictions to canon, but if you see any, will you let me know? I need to re-read Death Note, methinks. And if you have any other suggestions, etc., I love concrit. A lot.

***

Mello takes Matt not out of love, but because he sometimes needs the reassurance of another body beside his. He works long, hard, _chaotic_ days, after all; when he comes home afterward, it's nice for him to be able to let his guard down just a little. Sometimes he can't even let himself do that, but at least it helps him to get rid of the stress that seems to multiply by the minute and threatens to push him really, truly over the edge. He never dwells on it too much because that will certainly ruin him, but all the same: it's a hard life he leads nd there's a reason that mobsters do not usually come even close to meeting the average life expectancy. The urgency and inconsistency of it all has already drove many a man insane; hell, Mello knows that sanity is already one boundary he's already pushing, and he'd rather not push it any farther. Perhaps the human psyche resembles Hell, and the worse the things one does, the more crazy he gets. Mello doesn't like the sound of that, and that's where Matt comes in.

The boy (for he is just a boy, really; they both are even though they like to pretend they're so much more) is the closest friend Mello's ever had--or maybe just the closest thing to a friend; Mello's bad at discerning relationiships sometimes. All the knows is that he was dead and then alive again, was lost and then found, and that person who found him was Matt.

He doesn't even remember the _finding _bit too much, to be honest; he was probably pissed out of his mind the night he came home to find that he'd been tracked, and he's not sure how he reacted. All he knows is that a couple of days later, he work up to find Matt's gaming shit set up in every free corner of the apartment, and the cupboards stocked with more food than they'd had in quite awhile, and that was when he knew that, no matter what, Matt wasn't going to leave.

Time passed and somewhere along the way had started a _them_, and though Mello's not sure about how that happened, either, he's rather glad. The first few weeks were hard, and though the two of them had known each other for as long as either could remember, there was an awkward feeling of catching up and _look-who-you've-become_ and then acquainting oneself with the parts of the other that hadn't existed the last time they'd seen each other. Then there was the requisite redefinition of _yours_ and _mine_ and _ours_ now that nobody was watching to step in should anything get out of hand. Yes, those first few weeks had been hard, what will Mello still getting into all sorts of bad stuff and coming home so high that he wasn't even sure how he'd gotten back in one piece, but somewhere in that time, Mello knows he must have labeled Matt in the _min_ecategory and slowly fallen into him instead of all the drugs and alcohol he'd turned to before.

Matt had seemed relieved that Mello had decided to kick his bad habits in favor of fucking him, and though Mello was careful to never show it, he was relieved, too: though things had sometimes gotten a bit hazy while he was under the constant influences of drugs and alcohol and so much _death_, they got better with Matt.

There are some days that Mello feels guilty for being so greedy that he's taken Matt for all the wrong reasons, and other days that he feels like he deserves to be fucking _worshipped_ for taking Matt in like he has. Even the gods don't dare laugh at the irony there, but they know that, regardless of who's in charge, it's really Matt who's taken Mello in. If either of the two ever deserved something from the other, Mello is definitely the one in debt.

Then again, perhaps what they have now is the closest to a thank you that Matt will ever get for his deeds, because it's certainly the closest that Mello has ever given.

In true Mello style, though, the favor he tells himself he's doing for Matt has selfish undertones; every time he wrestles Matt beneath him, he's able to erase the worries that Near might be beating him; every time he wakes up in Matt's arms, he forgets how it sometimes feels as if he's leaving bits of himself behind with every man he's killed. Matt keeps him from shattering into a thousand pieces, and in return, Mello gives him everything he can without lying; every time he marks Matt or hisses, "you're mine," the boy takes it as an "I love you" and Mello doesn't bother to correct him. To Matt, maybe that's truly what it is; maybe it's even what Mello means, or would mean if he bothered to think about love. Either way, it's what holds the two of them together in the mess of their tangled limbs and broken souls, and Mello is willing to do almost anything to preserve the fragile equilibrium the two have found.

***

Matt has never been quite sure what to make of Mello, so he tries to remake him, instead; to shape him in the form of the God he's always thinking about, because at least then he'll have some frame of reference for defining Mello. As it is, not even this works—how could Matt even _think_ he could be strong enough to shape a person like Mello?—but Mello's sometimes so egotistical that he acts like he's God anyways, so at those times, everything is okay.

Of course, _those times_ are mainly a show that he puts on for other people, so when it's just Matt around, Mello's himself again: that brings Matt back to his original problem, but he does the best he can. If he makes a mistake every once in a while, he's sure to learn from it before he moves on. Mello's not the sort of guy one should make the same mistake with twice.

Matt considers himself lucky that he's never ended up dead for an error in judgment, because that's how things happen in the world that Mello lives in now. He likes to think he's the only thing that Mello has left of the old world, and that he's being kept safe from everything else for a reason.

They never talk about it, but it's one of those things that doesn't need to be said: Matt is sure that Mello's array of fancy weaponry isn't just for show, and though Mello has never confirmed it, he hasn't done anything to deny it, either. Matt has noticed that there are nights when Mello is a lot more _needy_, if that's a word that can be used to describe it, and that those nights always coincide with the ones where Mello walks through the door with a certain look on his face.

It's not exactly an expression that screams, "I killed a man," but then, Mello has never been all that forthright with his feelings.

Another, more sure, way of knowing that something's happened is that Mello comes home drunk. Matt _knows_ that he hates himself for doing it, so it only follows that it makes him forget something he hates even more.

(It doesn't _really_ help him to forget, and Matt's figured that out even if Mello hasn't: he's the one that sits awake through Mello's nightmares and wonders if there's anything more he can possibly do to help.)

Sometimes, on those nights when Mello's drunk and out so hard that he wouldn't wake up if a tornado came through and ripped the walls from around them, Matt will get up and look at the remains of Mello's life and wonder.

He'll see the files that Mello keeps neatly stacked on the desk—and he'll think they're just for show because, aside from the fact that he's never seen them touched, anything that Mello uses is bound to be more disorderly than that. He'll see the pictures that Mello took to cover his tracks when he left Wammy's (somehow, they've never gotten thrown away), and next to them, he'll see all of Mello's weapons, meticulously arranged and oiled so that each piece gleams in what moonlight manages to sneak around the edges of the blinds.

It is this display that scares Matt the most, because it always seems so calm and innocuous, yet is cared for with a precision that Mello does not even afford himself. Matt will run his hands up and down the barrels of the guns, trace a finger along the bulbs of the grenades, even brush the pins if he's feeling especially reckless. He's not sure why Mello keeps grenades with him at all times, and he's not sure he wants to know. It's one of those questions not asked out of regard for one's sanity.

As he feels the metal, cool beneath his fingers, Matt wonders if each piece has a story to tell. Or not if, even—_what_. Mello can surely make these guns sing, and Matt wants to know what tune they play for him as he dares to fight destiny—or maybe even shape it, if that's what he's doing, because if anyone could change the way things are, that person would be Mello.

He also wonders if—and hopes that—the guns are quieter now than they used to be, because when he arrived, they had just finished making Mello into a complete mess, and Matt likes to think that Mello's getting better than he used to be. Likes to think that it's him that cured Mello, and not only from the drugs and most of the drink, but also from his habit of ripping people's lives apart and destroying things as easily as he if were simply moving another piece on the chess board.

Matt doesn't ask _that_ one because he tells himself that he doesn't want to remind Mello and trigger a relapse, but deep down he knows it's because he's afraid of the answer. Screw that, not because he's afraid, but because he doesn't want to hear confirmation of what he already knows; because he's sinkingly aware that Mello is playing everyone around him and he can do it without the flick of an eyelid. Matt doesn't want to know if he's being played too, but figures that even if he is, he'll take it because Mello's fingers feel so good as they jerk him around. So good, in fact, that most nights Matt would never even think to consider it. But the times when Mello is roughest also happen to be the nights when he has the nightmares, and after Matt's had a chance to collect himself, the bruises seem less a mark of love and more one of possession and threat: _do what I want, or I'll do worse._

Matt takes Mello because he loves him, needs him; the day he left Wammy's knowing that he was going to see Mello again was the first day in a long while that he'd felt any sort of hope and purpose in his life. Likewise, the day Mello came home piss drunk at 3 am and let out a surprised stream of curses because _Matt_ was in his apartment was the day that Matt fully realized how much he'd missed him. It was also the day that they had shared their first kiss; Matt not even meaning to, but Mello letting him because he was drunk enough. Matt could have pushed Mello a lot farther that first night, but he decided to not wear out his welcome in such a spectacular manner, so he put Mello to bed and just sat there, watching him sleep.

The next few days followed a similar sort of pattern; Matt taking care of Mello when he needed it (almost every night) and playing video games most of the rest of the time, and a couple of weeks in Mello had sobered up enough to recognize him, and there was finally a _them_, and Matt was happy.

Since then, he's been extra careful to not piss Mello off, staying out of the way and letting him rage when he's angry and keeping him company when he needs that, and somehow the two of them have found harmony. It's not the harmony that Matt dreamt of when he left Wammy's a young, idealistic, romantic thing; then again, the gun-toting, leather-wearing mob boss is not the Mello he expected to find. And as he begins to settle into his role by Mello's side he thinks that yeah, maybe life as L's successor isn't as glorious or exciting as he'd imagined it would be… but all in all, things have worked out better than they _might_ have, which should be enough for anyone.

He's a smart boy, Matt; maybe not smart enough to ever really compete with Mello and Near, but smart enough to know to be grateful for what he has. That's the reason that he hangs on to Mello so tightly, because he's sure that sooner or later, things will start to go badly again, and this time, he won't be able to fix them.

***


End file.
